Suggested way to build this newspaper database in DT?

DEVONthink
1

One of the things that brought me to DT was the clunkiness of building a database of newspaper/magazine articles in excel. I’m not sure if that’s possible or if this is the app to do it in. Here’s a sample of my database. Can you suggest a way to build something like this out in DT?

  • The big reasons I want to do this in DT are 1. to download images (pdfs?) of the associated articles and OCR them for search, and 2. DT is fast.
  • obviously tagging works a lot better in DT than a spreadsheet :wink:
  • It seems like metadata is an issue. I could build it thru custom but that seems like a heavy lift.
2

If you persist in this method, you can export the document as a tab-delimited (.tsv) file and import that into DEVONthink. It will be used as a DEVONthink sheet.

Table view

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Form View (in Pro / Server)

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Editing the Table

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For me, that looks like a typical task for a relational database. Not Excel or any spreadsheet. Perhaps DT.

4

And what happens if they need more than 4 tags or 5 links? A spreadsheet simply doesn’t cut it, imo

5

This is what the Django infrastructure was designed for. Surely there are others. Used it for years to help manage a lot of management info and web site publishing for an org that led. Yes, more complex than a spreadsheet, but then building a newspaper is complex. Feels like DEVONthink would just get in the way, except for place to store documents.

1 Like
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Importing the documents, tagging them and maybe using custom metadata and/or annotations (see Annotations & Reminders) inspector for notes, multiple links and additional info (date, title, author etc.) should be possible actually. But a spreadsheet sounds indeed limited/cumbersome in this case.

7

Oh I certainly know lol

Any suggestions what tree to bark up here? I don’t know how to program.

Spreadsheet certainly isn’t the best tool, but in this case it does have ease-of-entry going for it it. The spreadsheet has ~3000 entries and I can’t imagine entering it all into DT. Well, there may be a way to import it, but this is a live database that I plan to keep using and entering into. DT doesn’t have a way of looking at group item data in tables, does it?

Thanks all.

8

I don’t quite understand. In your first post, you complained about clunkiness in respect to the spreadsheet. Now you’re going to stick with it anyway because of the ease of data entry.
What it is that you’re asking here?

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I would write an applescript to import the spreadsheet,
converting the columns to tags ans custom metadata

I don’t know how to program.

Applescripting is straightforward, and you’ll get lots of help from the forum
Here’s an example of code I use to import spreadsheet data

Click here to see script 
tell application id "DNtp" ------------------------Extract the content of the .csv file
	set theBankcsvFile to content record
	set theBankcsvName to name of the theBankcsvFile
	set theBankcsvPath to path of theBankcsvFile as string
	set theBankcsvText to paragraphs of (read theBankcsvPath as «class utf8»)
end tell

repeat with theBankcsvRow in theBankcsvText -------------- Process each row 
	set theNoteTitle to Process_Columns(theBankcsvRow) ---- Parse the row content by columns
	set theNoteTags to Process_Tags(theNoteTitle)
	tell application id "DNtp" -------------------------- Create Note
	    set theNewRecord to create record with {name:theNoteTitle, type:txt, content:theBankcsvRow, tags:theNoteTags} in theFilingGroup
	end tell
end repeat
10

I was responding based on what the OP had and was already actively using and also showing them (and any others passing by)…

  1. DEVONthink supports tabular data in sheets.
  2. An export to .tsv (or even .csv) from a source like Google Sheets is nicely handled by DEVONthink as a sheet.
  3. A quick illustration of the ability to specificy or modify the headers in such a sheet.

And I opened with… If you persist in this method….

11

DT doesn’t have a way of looking at group item data in tables, does it?

You need to better define things. What is group item data?

Also, clarifying the desired environment would be useful. If a sheet suits you, go for it. But if you’re imagining something better, it needs to be concrete. Like, “I picture a group, with a PDF and a text document. Both are tagged. I use a red label to denote it’s overdue; a green one that it’s new. In the parent group, I’d have a rich text document I can add item links to. This would function like a small internal index for me…”

12

I don’t see your handlers.

set theBankcsvText to paragraphs of (read theBankcsvPath as «class utf8»)

I’m curious. Why are you reading as utf8?

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I’m sure there’s a good reason, but I’ve forgotten
I played around with various code to import the data

edit; from Nigel Garvey
For historical reasons, AppleScript’s ‘read’ and ‘write’ commands default to reading files as Mac Roman-encoded text and writing text to them in that form too. But most text files nowadays, on the Mac at least, are encoded as UTF-8 Unicode text. So it’s a good idea to use as «class utf8» routinely where the data are text. That way, you’re always covered for non-ASCII characters. Strangely, Apple has never got round to implementing a keyword to go with the «class utf8» token.

I don’t see your handlers.

To follow, if Op wants to pursue this
This will be highly customized to match the data being imported

14

Gotcha. Good ol’ Nigel Garvey :heart::smiling_face: